Crossing cultures?

I was reading an historical fiction book last week based in India under the Raj, what stood out for me particularly was the position of those who were half Indian and half English.  They were accepted by neither and suffered quite badly from both parts of society they lived in.

It made me stop and think about the challenge of middle class planters planting into working class and deprived areas.  I struggle to place myself in terms of class, I guess I'm middle class, but I'll let you decide.  On one side my Grandad was a farm labourer he lived in a tithe cottage until he and my grandma died paying I think 50p a week rent.  They were never wealthy, none of their children went to university.  My maternal grandparents were very different, landowner farmers and clearly quite wealthy, at least back when that was possible in farming.  Added to that my dad had a management job, we were encouraged to do well at school, college and then go to university.  I then trained as a teacher and taught for 5 years before entering ministry.  So far so very middle class, though with working class roots.

Then we came to Yorkshire and then planted Grace Church into an ex-RAF base, with lots of social housing and some more affluent areas, in many ways we have all the divisions of a town in a more compressed area.  It was an area intensely segregated along base housing lines.  And with a slightly unique former forces feel.  It is a hard place to plant, we have seen fruit, but it has not been low hanging, but hard graft.  And increasingly I find myself not quite fitting in in either social class.  I've discovered I've quickly adopted the same chips on my shoulder as those we work predominantly alongside, though perhaps with the added zeal of the converted ex-smoker, in terms of class.  I see so many privileges that are taken for granted by so many Churches and Christians who don't stop to think about who they are not reaching in how we do things, who we are reaching, accessibility, funding ministry etc...  Who swallow the media line about the undeserving poor and the feckless welfare spongers.  When reality is far from that for the vast majority.

But I also find that I don't quite fit with those we work alongside, we have some shared experiences but so many that are different.  My assumptions and theirs about childhood, food, bills, schooling, parenting and so on are so very different.  But and here's the key we listen and learn and love.  And we seek to apply the gospel again and again in our actions and our conversation committed to people and the area.

One of the fallacies in the UK church scene is that you need people with working class and deprived backgrounds to plant into those areas.  In some ways it would be a huge advantage, but in another it ways it comes with some big potential drawbacks.  What these areas need is people of whatever class who will love and listen and serve in humility.  It needs people who don't assume they know the answers but come with compassionate determination to listen and empower not assume and solve.  We need people who love Jesus and show that by loving people, who cross divides, who accept differences, who don't confuse gospel values and cultural or class values.  Who will commit to discipling those who are very different from them and train up leaders over the long term from any and every social background.  We need people who are prepared to be between cultures for Christ.